Pioneer Days at the Chisholm Trail

 Howdy! We’ve been really busy lately so haven’t been able to post, but I have a minute to catch up with all y’all. So, sit back and enjoy some pictures of what we’ve been up to!

 Part of what we do as a family here on the Bates Silver Spur Ranch is work rodeos and also perform as re-enactors.

Last week was Pioneer Days at the Chisholm Trail Outdoor (Living) Museum here in Cleburne. There are many historic buildings and replicas of historic buildings on the grounds with plenty of items and artifacts to see. The Big Bear Indian Museum recently opened, there is a school house where schools and homeschoolers come out to spend a day in an 1800’s class room, taught just like it was back then as the museum offers an instructor who teaches history while teaching other subjects of that period. There is also an actively working court house that was built in the 1800’s in what was then known as the town of Wardville. There is a working Blacksmiths shop, Mule Barn and teepees.

 During Pioneer Days the “town” of Wardville comes alive again with many craftsmen, town’s people, gunfights, both an Indian encampment and a military encampment equipped with canons that are shot every hour. Here are a few pictures from that weekend which extended into Thanksgiving weekend!

 

Be looking for more activities here and if you should see horsemen riding in the town of Cleburne looking like something out of a movie, they most likely are from Wardville on the Chisholm Trail! Hope y’all can stop out and see us!

 

 

Chicks Hatched!!

Here they are!

 Chicks Hatched! So what is it about Sundays around the Silver Spur Ranch? Even though it’s supposed to be a day of rest, seems that is when our livestock goes into labor! Hee hee! The calf was born in the wee hours of a Sunday morn. We hadn’t fed the livestock this morning as we left early for church. When we got home and I was feeding the chickens and turkeys, I looked in to our Buff Orpington hen who has been nesting.

 She was in a different spot (not on her eggs), then I noticed egg shells and looked further…sure enough, there were 8 little perfect chicks!!

Kelly had to fight me to give her a nest as I had been short on eggs the day he separated her from the flock and I didn’t have an extra nesting box. I’m thankful that he went ahead and did it anyway. Isn’t that always the way? Well, it often is with me! (wink) Today is also my birthday and he reminded me of the fact that she hatched them on my birthday! I made a joke and said, “Men…they’ll do anything to get out of shopping!” Ha ha! Well…actually he didn’t plan it that way but it was pretty funny!

Since they are newbies we are not going to fuss with sexing them just yet. I was going to re order this year, but now I am rethinking that idea. We might just hatch our own this year as I’ve not been selling many chickens or eggs since we moved to Texas, like I used to in Colorado. In Colorado, I was selling hens and eggs to other Ranchers who had orders to fill for restaurants and such but their production was down due to the cold weather. Kelly was raised in the mountains of Colorado and really has a keen sense when it comes to cold weather and getting livestock to produce in 20 below conditions! In Colorado, I would order 100 chicks or more a year. Every 2 yrs. I would rotate and butcher the older hens unless they were good broody hens. We had one, Short Stuff (a little bitty Banty hen) who would get very upset with me if I got eggs out from under her. She would let me, but she was NOT a happy camper. The funniest thing was a rooster she hatched who was from another hen’s egg. He was huge but whenever another chicken would go after him, he’d run and hide behind his little banty hen mama!

 Stay tuned for more updates around the ranch! Give us a call and head on out to the ranch when y’all get a chance.

From up at the Main Bunkhouse,

Happy Trails!

Elvira

Suzy Threw a Calf this morning!

A while back, Daniel’s heifer Suzy got out on us and wandered down to the neighbor who has a herd of Black Angus. Of course, I was dealing with cancer so all of the kids headed down with the stock trailer, herded her up into it and brought her home. There was a passing thought of wondering if she got out due to it being her time. But, due to my cancer, no one put much thought to it except a little thought of…“Hmmm…I wonder?”

 

Yesterday she prolapsed just slightly, so Kevin palpated her to see how she was doing. He couldn’t feel anything, but got her back to regular shape. Jessie had been saying she thought she was carrying and she seemed full in her udders. Well, this morning, when Kelly went out to feed her before church, there was a little black calf right beside her! She must have thrown that calf in the middle of the night and she did just fine. This is always the most crucial part…a heifer or her calf can die while in the middle of calving. But, Suzy is proven now! Those Angus were full sized old boys and she did just fine all by herself the first time out!

 

 Strong, healthy, good conformation and getting colostrum! We are all excited! Daniel has his start to a herd! We haven’t decided exactly what we’ll do with the little one just yet, but if she is sold, Daniel will have the money for more heifers and will be able to AI them!

Summer on the Ranch...

We started out summer by working rodeos!! June is a big rodeo month. We worked the Johnson County Sheriff's Posse Rodeo here in Texas which is our new rodeo family that we are getting to know and love! We weren’t able to make it to the Elizabeth Stampede in Colorado this year but heard from friends they had to shut the rodeo down for a short time, due to tornadoes…with that came hail and cold weather. Yep…typical Colorado weather in June! We did make it to Cowboy Up in Kiowa, rodeo which was late June, so hot days and nights in the 50’s…brrr. We enjoyed working it and working with our Colorado rodeo family!

 Here we are with C.J. & Janet under the hospitality tents before the rodeo got started.

 

 

 

Kelly & Daniel with Mike Smith...we used to help Mike and Anita out at Flat Acres Farm when we lived in Parker, Colorado. They put on a great Fall Festival and I've heard they are expanding the place!








Jessie giving Anita one of the necklaces she made.

 Kelly behind the shoots with the sheep before Mutton Bustin'. This was about as close as I was able to get for pictures in Kiowa...it's hard to get close to the shoots. He was behind the shoots with Daniel in the next picture, but he was too far away for my little old camera to capture.

As you can see in this picture, that is Daniel to the left standing, he had just helped to get that bull through the shoots when it decided to go up and over the top of the gate. That is about an 8-10ft gate at least! The bull was half way over but by the time I took the picture, he had slid back down a bit!! We had a great time and a great visit up in Colorado with friends and family!

Summer at the Ranch has us all working in the mornings and in the pool by afternoons! Haven’t posted much lately as we’ve been a bit busy getting a lot of things done so we can ramp up activities for fall and the school year!

 We often have ranch hands come out for day work or to live on the ranch and have them give us a hand in their own particular talents. We have also found ourselves giving young folks a start in ranch life or life in general. We’ve enjoyed Luke’s stay and help in putting in much of the railroad ties for decks, help on the little bunkhouse, putting up a welding/work shop, staining fence posts, etc. He will be moving on to greener pastures in the big city after getting his first job and first truck while working here with us. He got a job up there and will go to college and hopes to have a ranch of his own one day.

 We have a new hand, Kevin, who is a West Texas/Panhandle real, authentic cowboy who grew up on a ranch in Oklahoma and has been helping us work our horses. He’s also been working fence, fixing and putting up our green house and will be taking over the little bunkhouse from Luke to continue the work on it.

 As you can imagine…there is always a lot of work to be done on a ranch, no matter how big or small it is. Barrels need to be sanded and painted regularly for barrel racing, tractors need to be used for many things including clearing weeds with a brush hog and prepping for an arena or keeping an arena in good shape. Of course, there are always repairs to do on the tractor itself but most of those come in the winter months, once we get the workshop finished, there’ll be time enough for that. I am soo thankful we won’t need the tractor here in Texas for snow removal the way we did in Colorado!

 Up at the Main Bunkhouse, we’ll be staining cabinets in the kitchen soon, while we still have some of that warm Texas summer weather and hoping to start on tiling the kitchen counter top soon after. I finally got the last of our things from the storage building we've been renting for over 2yrs. and have them stored here on the property. I’ll be going through some things to see what I have to put up around the ranch, from our last ranch house. Including some baby/toddler things as our grandson turned one year old and we have a new grandbaby on the way…due come next spring!

 The horses are up in the main pasture right now due to mesquite thorns getting into their hooves. Kevin did a great job with their hooves and Kelly was able to find the source of the problem!

 We were hoping the pond would dry up over a hot dry summer as we now have a tractor and had wanted to dredge it up to make it deeper to store water in it over the summer and use the soft shiny silt for arena dirt! But, we’ve had an ample amount of rain this year so it’s not empty yet. They say we are still in a mild drought…so here’s hoping we can still get that cleaned out!

 The turkeys are getting bigger and enjoy it when I hose them down during the hot days of summer, as do the chickens. I’ve been thankful to finally feel like getting out there and caring for them since I’ve not been under cancer treatment. Some of the simple things in life hold the most joy!

 The trees are all showing the wear of August as their fully formed leaves turn a darker green with a little drooping as if to tip their hand that fall is nearing. We had a colder than normal winter and summer so here’s hoping we won’t have a cold fall as I really enjoy fall here in Texas!

 Our garden has done tremendously well this year and there are already plans underway to extend it ever larger for next spring! We’ve had best luck with tomatoes & peppers of several varieties, along with Okra works well in the Texas heat. We also have, Swiss chard, lettuce, sweet basil, dill and green beans. We hope to start squash vegetables (cool weather plants) soon. Here’s a shout out to our friends, Sheila and Jennifer who helped get us accustomed to Texas style gardening! Hoping to be doing a lot of canning, cold packing and dry storage by next year! It will be nice to have our gardens producing that much again, like we did in Colorado and I imagine even better eventually as battling heat and bugs isn’t near as hard as blizzards, hail and a short growing season in the high elevations of Colorado.

The mother board went out on my computer so it had to be sent out to get the work done on it and sent back to me (The pony express would have taken less time y'all) ! Between that and a busy workin' summer, I'll have to apologize for not many posts going out. We have a lot of plans in the works...so keep on comin' back to take a look at what's up around the Bunkhouse and the Silver Spur Ranch!

 

 

 

 

 

Ranch Nights

Our first Ranch Nights was a success! We just happened to have had some of our Colorado Rodeo family down for a visit for our opening Ranch Night. I’m really bad about taking pictures with others here and having a good time…just don’t want to spoil a festive mood. But, I’ll show you a few “before” pictures and explain what we’ve been up to.

We learned a lot from our Rodeo Families and we bring all of it to the Silver Spur Ranch. Hospitality workers at a rodeo keep the atmosphere homey and comfortable. Contestants and VIP's travel great distances to get there to perform. Hospitality tries to make their stay enjoyable as we set up tents or rodeo grounds with a ranch home feel to them. Bringing the indoors outdoors is part of that job.

We had lots of "hands on" help on Friday...so Friday night, in typical rodeo style...we had our workers spend the night with tents, campers and motorhomes and enjoyed a "prequel" or pre party! Here is some of their handy work!

First, a sitting area...Jessie fell in love with the bronco, the sconces add a little depth and evening lighting...I loved the wing backed leather chair and pillow. The antique chair leant a bit of whimsy along with the carpet.

Loved the antique doors...they are a great accent.

Of course, plenty of room to sit and eat. And yes...the table at the end is the picnic bench many of you told me about from Lowe's...we stained it with Pecan stain. Picked up the chairs from Gypsy Trunk in Burleson...they are about 50yrs. old.

Here is the famous deck made with Railroad Ties...great view of the work arena, pasture and pond beyond it with the wooded "reserve" in the background, great view from this deck...it's under a huge oak and pecan tree. There's usually a nice breeze coming through there as well.

A little diversion for the eyes...Jessie put these together.

And...a camping spot near the camp fire...there was a tent set up there as well. We have lots of space whenever y'all come out for tents and campers! You can be up close to conveniences or out in the boonies! Hey...that reminds me...may just be time for a boondoggle!

Ranch Work...

Ranch work…well, that’s a looong story! We work all the time around here and we keep making it all better for y’all to come on out! People marvel at how we are always up to some sorta work around here. Yessiree…guilty as charged!

In fact, it’s been so busy around here that I’ve not had a chance to update my blog. So, sit back and see what we’ve been up to! We had a lot of barbed wire fencing around here with rusted field fence and we replaced it with wood poles and stable fencing. Here is Babe as I'm trying to get a picture of the fencing...we'll say howdy to her first! Her ears are back because I just told her to move...she thought I was going to take a picture of her!  

Sorry, Babe...but the blog post is about fencing. I'll do more on you later...maybe with all the kids you love and teach! Btw...Babe is a papered Arabian and her papered name is Bathsheba! There ya go Babe...doing you a little justice!

Okay...so here is a nice view of the fencing...sorry Babe...without you in it! 

We found some great stain that we used on the fence posts that we really love. It gives it all a rustic look and besides, it matches the Railroad Ties and huge old poles that are probably over 50yrs. old that we decided to retain. You can see one of them right there by Babe.

As you can see, this place came with some very cheap gates that we’ve slowly been replacing them as we go. This is what happens to gates during "horse play" yes...a lot of kicking and wrangling of positions and opinions! We've taken out a good deal of barbed wire, field fence and T-posts.

 

We put in an extra big stock gate so we can fit our tractor and other equipment into the work arena and be able to start working on our full sized arena.

Baby Rabbits! (Kits)

Lilac had her babies! Baby rabbits are called kits, there are 6 in the litter…one all black, some white and some black and white spotted! Lilac is a mix and that is why all the pretty colors!

 

In this picture you can see inside the nesting box. The mama rabbit pulls her fur out to make a soft warm blanket for her babies! They will be ready to adopt in a few weeks! We hope to sell them as pets because they are a mix, but they can also be used as meat rabbits. We also have Californians and Flemish/Californians who are meat rabbits. They are a much larger rabbit.

Working the Horses

Horses need to be ridden regularly and if not, some will develop little problems as they may have not had complete training, may forget some of the more subtle commands, even question why they are being asked to do a specific thing, etc.

Our Papered, Chestnut Arabian Mare, Babe, is fully trained with 26yrs. of experience. She is able to rein, compete in barrel and other events, as well as open gates so that the rider doesn’t have to dismount and has performed in parades by rubbing spurs along her sides, she will “dance”. This is not painful, it sort of tickles and that is her cue to dance.

The best way to train horses is “gentling”, which helps them understand you want to be their “partner” not an aggressor. Sad to say, too often most horse trainers are aggressive in their training. Good training takes a long time and a lot of patience.

We recently had a cowboy friend of ours come up from Amarillo and help us work out our horse, Cowboy…who is a smaller stature Papered White Arabian Gelding and was spoiled by the previous owner that we had gotten him from, but they were not his original owners or trainers. So, he knows most of his commands, but we’ve had to work on him to get him out of a few bad habits that he had developed in their care. He was not wanting to back up, he was crow hopping, not turning to the left and just in general not responding to commands.

Star is a Black Arabian, she is papered but we have not yet received those papers from the ranch that bred her. She is larger in stature and "cowie" which means she will make a good team roping horse. She was head shy when we got her, but she is coming along nicely now.

 

 

 

 

Starting up the Garden

First, we bring in the big guns! We had sold our tractor in Colorado when we left and only NOW find out it was a collector tractor…our new one is as well and we paid close to the same price…soo it’s all good! Here's what a tractor can do in short order!

 With the ranch, we inherited an old swing set that was beyond repair and actually dangerous. We thought maybe we’d just scrap it but that inventive spirit hit and we decided it would be a great backdrop for a garden! Since we didn’t have a tractor, Daniel did his best to tiller it up for us and we made due with a small garden…the first year we just experimented but soon found out this ground just, like Colorado ground, needed a lot of amending to the soil. Oh, it was rich and black enough but would dry up hard as a rock and crack in the heat of summer and become a sponge when it rained. We didn’t have time to build up a compost, soo, we went down to Habitat and got LOTS of bags of garden soil at a cheaper price to get us started.

Once the ground was broken up and cleared, Daniel brought his tiller in to dig deeper. He then filled it up further with compost...so it is "Double Dug" to about 24 inches which helps retain the soil when it rains and gives new plants or seedlings room to easily stretch out and build their root systems. Because we now have compost, we were able to double our garden space.

Jessie is standing in the middle of where the old garden stopped and where the added garden starts.

We had such a problem with squash vine borers last year that I am going to start out my heirloom seeds inside and get the plants fairly large to get them in the ground by the first of Sept. The vine borers come out the last week of June and last well into July or a little beyond. Since we have a long growing season, thought I might give this a try! Last year I lost my gorgeous squash to the borer and in reading up about them, they're nearly impossible to get rid of if they've gotten into your soil but they will die out the next year without a host. So, say a pray and wish me luck!  ;) This year I wasn't even going to plant at all and just give the soil a rest. But, a dear friend of our offered some extras that she had started from seed and had no more room to plant! That got us going! So, have scoured stores around and found some heirloom plants! We'll mainly be planting hot crops for the summer which will be a lot of varieties of peppers and tomatoes, and the plants that our friend gave us.

I planted a vining rose last year and these Tea Roses. The Tea Roses I transplanted as they were at the edge of my  old garden so am hoping they take.

 

Re Enactments/Pat Cleburne Days

Our whole family has been involved in Re-enactments! Here is my eldest, Jessie and my youngest, Daniel, enjoying Pat Cleburne Days here in Cleburne, Texas! It was a beautiful day!

As ranch folks, we have a tender part in our hearts for the old west of course and that has led us to also participate in Re-enactments and fun with those we’ve met who enjoy history. When in “Character” we become people from that time period and we thoroughly enjoy it…partly because it is who we are in real life, or who we would have been if born in that time period as far as the clothes we might have worn and the places we might have sought out to be. Our characters model real ranch life many times.

Daniel has a fascination with guns…has since he was a little tyke! He is now certified in shooting Canons and is a part of Terry's Texas Rangers! This is Daniel loading and preparing to fire.

This next one was a little blurry but that's what happens when one of them fires...it is actually very dangerous, earth shakingly loud and that is why a person has to be trained and certified to do this.

Here's Daniel playing for us at camp. His uniform is what the Confederate Artillery Units wore. He just learned "When Johnny Comes Marching Home."

Another activity of the day, learning to make Rag Dolls.

Here is a dress that Jessie is working on for Re-enactments...she will be adding more lace to the top and to the bottom and using her hoop skirt once she is done.

This is Robert our Corpsman "Army Medic".

 

 

Cowboy Mud Room

Cowboy Mudroom! Here is something pretty inventive! This was a curb pick up…someone had old fencing sitting at the curb to take. So we took it and have done all sorts of things with it. This is one of the many uses you can find for an old fence. Kelly put hooks on it and hung it on the wall. It’s really stable and holds, cowboy hats, chaps, even some horse tack! It’s right handy by the door. We also bought some cheap rugs we got at Big Lots and threw them down by the door…hay and mud cling to them instead of tracking through the rest of the house. A quick once over with the vacuum cleaner makes a quick job of it! That’s not easy when there’s so much work goin’ on outside and mud everywhere, tracking in with all the galoots we have trampin’ across the floor! If you do this, just make sure the wood is free from any wood eating varmints. Then, put up a sign like we’ve got that reads, “Life is full of choices…Remove yer boots or scrub the floors.”

 

Happy Trails Y’all!

Canning/Pastry Table

 

Here’s something my Grandma had and nearly every home used to. A Canning or Pastry Table was very useful as it was lower than the typical counter top, it had a little drawer in the middle for utensils and a metal porcelain enamel top to handle hot things and be a cool surface for dough.  It was good for rolling out dough for pies and my grandmother kneaded her bread on it and rolled out pastas that she would hang and dry.  They are also the right height to work on if you are canning because you can place hot jars and pots on it. They also hold very nicely many appliances of the day…here I have my grandmothers cheese grinder towards the wall with the wooden top with which you push the cheese through and a meat grinder. I also have an industrial can opener somewhere…still looking for it since the move! Probably still in a box in storage somewhere. One of the downfalls in moving from a 3,000 sq. ft. house to a 2,000 sq. ft. house…we’ll change that eventually!

There is room underneath for a chair, or to keep many things that you may need in your kitchen. Because I typically make meals in bulk, grow or raise our own food, cold pack, can or dry storage the food, I really enjoy using the old way of doing things. People talk and talk about energy conservation, going green and then use every electric appliance mankind can dream up, spend lots of money on all those new appliances and on top of that, spend money to go to the gym to work out...if you want to energy conserve and get a work out...this is the way to do it! We used to use "hand power" rather than electric power. Women were well fit, the environment was much cleaner and the food tasted much better! Women were valued in the home! And although since moving to Texas, I understand we have our own power grid...we still have outages, so it's always nice to be able to do the work without being interrupted!

Here is a closer view of those grinders to the right and yes, those are eggs from my chickens!  

New Finds! I was at an estate sale and got the "pick" of butter churns! They had about 5 of them, different sizes and many that were cracked and only for ornamental use. I found this one, it's a 3lb. churn and is in perfect condition except for the lack of the churn handle but my husband knows how to make one, so that will be a future project for y'all to learn about! I'm really excited to get this as I've never been able to afford one, they are very pricy...I happened to go to the sale again on 50% off day and lo and behold, there were still a few of these there! It was originally $40 which isn't a bad price, but I got it for $20...well within my budget! I hope to someday get a milk cow but we'll see, the family still would rather have beef, but at least I've got the churn and can always go buy cream from a dairy until I get a cow!

Also, found these canning jars, it's a 100 yr. celebration that brought them back in a "Heritage Collection" and can be found at any store with canning supplies. I had my Mom over and she said she believed the green jars came before the blue ones...this is from her memory growing up on a farm in Upstate New York where her Mom canned all the time. Although, they have a blue that has come out, it really doesn't look as close to the originals which were kind of an aqua color, which seems to have more green than blue in it. The blue they have brought back is just not as close to the originals. For those who want to know, jar canning was invented by Mason in 1858 and he died a poor man, having let his patent expire! It's all debatable as to which is best, the color helps retain the color and flavor of the food, while the clear helps you see what you have and if it's retained its color! I guess it's a toss up on this one!

As you can see, I LOVE my jars! Especially the huge glass ones. I've found that boxed items just don't keep their flavor and living in the country...we are always susceptible to bugs and mice! Because I've typically lived out on land (especially in Colorado where one may have to endure blizzards and road closures so you can't even get into town to stores very often) plus, the distance of the travel alone 30-60 min., I keep a HUGE stock of dry goods. Here at our new place in Texas, I'm the closest to town that I've been in years! But still think this is an advantage as if there were ever a shortage for any reason...I'm stocked up without paying those high priced Survivalist items!

Here you see another part of my "work station"...we make & sell these if you want one! I buy the "restaurant size" foil and saran wrap from Sam's Club...another way in which I keep from going to the store every other minute and keep costs down!

Another part of my work station holds the flour sifter I grew up with, it was my Mom's. Just above it is my Grandma's Hand Crank pasta maker! It has many different "rollers" that will cut different styles of pasta! Above that is a scale and yes, it does still work! So, if you are interested in antiques and how to actually USE them...keep checking my blog or better yet...follow it so you'll get regular updates!

Also, I'm more interested in dry storage for many reasons...one of them being that on a ranch, there are lots of hungry men to feed and canning jars (even the large ones) get used too quickly for the amount of work that is put into canning.

Typically, I'll can specialty items like my hubby's Mama's (from her Mama's recipe) for Watermelon Preserves. I'll give a class in it at some point and also dry storage when I get the chance. This a pic from a few years ago, in Colorado. My Mom lived on a farm but her Mom was the only one who canned because she was worried about safety of canning. Kelly's Mama had always told me that if I'm worried about it, I'll never can...so just do it and do it right, watch for problems but if you're scared of it, you'll never do it! She taught me to can years ago, when Kelly & I first married. His Daddy had a tractor and used to plant acreage so always had things to can. His Daddy especially liked beets (we are not fond of them but we canned them for him!)

Here is a picture of Kelly's Mama from years ago. She is originally from Texas!